The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Libya: Who, Whom?

Posted on | June 24, 2011 | 22 Comments

“But the bottom line is, whose side are you on? Are you on Qaddafi’s side or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people and the international coalition that has been created to support them? For the Obama Administration, the answer to that question is very easy.”
– Hillary Clinton, June 22

Everyone is having fun recalling the Good Old Days — which ended about three years ago — when liberals loved to lecture us that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Dissent against liberalism, however, apparently doesn’t count, even when liberals are doing the exact same things they once denounced Republicans for doing.

Obama’s Illegal War™ cannot be justified under any logic the Left would have accepted during the Bush years, and yet Democrats are cynical enough to realize that the Left has nowhere else to go: Whatever else happens, liberal peaceniks aren’t going to vote Republican next year, so Hillary can impute treason to them at no political cost. And political costs are the only costs that concern her.

It appears that Moammar Qaddafi’s regime is now tottering on the brink of collapse, and the dictator is reportedly considering his own “exit strategy,” which is good news, so long as you don’t worry too much about whether “the aspirations of the Libyan people” might include an Iranian-style radical Islamic theocracy. So we await Obama’s “Mission Accomplished” photo-op for his glorious triumph. Allahpundit ponders the consequences:

With every day of stalemate that passes between a tinpot desert dictator and a U.S./UK/France coalition, NATO’s global credibility as a viable military alliance shrinks — which, as Jonah Goldberg notes, ironically makes victory increasingly important. That’s why Hillary’s demagoging this. Somehow, they’ve bungled their way into making an otherwise unimportant mission a very big deal.

Insofar as we view this whole affair from the standpoint of U.S. interests, it is reminiscent of the war that Mrs. Clinton’s husband waged against Serbia in 1999. For my money, that was the stupidest war in American history. By comparison, the Spanish-American War (“Remember the Maine!”) was an exemplar of sane and responsible statesmanship. 

Whatever the numerous and grievous evils committed by Slobodan Milosevic, no one ever even bothered to claim that the Serbian dictator posed a threat to the United States or its allies. We fought that war at the behest of our European allies, in the name of “human rights,” and as de facto allies of the Kosovo Liberation Army, an Islamic terrorist organization reputedly linked to al-Qaeda. The NATO bombing campaign ultimately drove Milosevic from power, but at the price of profoundly alienating Russia, longtime allies of the Serbs.

Most of the same criticisms could be applied to the Libya war. Qaddafi is a very bad guy, but he had notably renounced terrorism after the overthrow of Saddam. When this war started, Qaddafi was a threat to no one except his own domestic opponents. And who, exactly, are those opponents? Who are these Libyan rebels we’re helping? We don’t know — Hillary herself has said as much. We don’t know who they are or what they want, and thus we have no idea what a post-Qaddafi Libya will look like.

Liberals cannot justify this policy on any terms that they would have accepted from defenders of Bush’s policies. The only justification they can make is the cynical justification Vladimir Lenin offered for his policies: “Who, whom?”

The context of Lenin’s infamous formula is often forgotten. Efforts toward socialist collectivization during the first years of the Soviet revolution had (predictably) produced economic disaster and food shortages. Therefore, Lenin introduced his “New Economic Policy,” a repudiation of what he called the “grievous error” of the attempt to abolish private agriculture and market exchange under so-called “War Socialism.”

Critics saw the hypocrisy of this: If private production and sale of grain resulted in a more plentiful supply than forced collectivism — as Lenin now admitted — wasn’t this a direct contradiction of socialist theory?

Rather than addressing that fundamental criticism, Lenin responded with “Who, whom?” What counted, Lenin said, was not whether any particular action was “socialist” or “capitalist,” but whether the action advanced the cause of the revolutionary proletariat (“who”) in their struggle against the reactionary bourgeois capitalists (“whom”).

Thus, it didn’t matter that the New Economic Policy was clearly a concession to capitalist means of production and exchange. What mattered, Lenin said, was whether the policy would strengthen the revolutionary movement. (After Lenin’s death, Leon Trotsky endeavored to defend the “who, whom” formula, evidently having no premonition that this revolutionary logic would lead to his own exile and assassination by a Stalinist agent.)

By the same logic, whatever policy is adopted by Democrats to advance the cause of liberalism, even a war of opportunity against a nation that posed no threat to the United States, can be justified by liberals, without regard to whether they would support a similar policy were it enacted by Republicans.

Liberals have only one principle — the pursuit of power – and all their high-flown moralistic rhetoric about peace and equality is merely a means to that end.

UPDATE: Professor Reynolds:

Libya is a “dumb war” — because it’s halfhearted, half-assed, and run by committee, and the President can’t even articulate the national interest involved. Obama the candidate said he was smarter than that. Obama the President is proving the candidate wrong.

This criticism requires us to accept Obama’s campaign rhetoric as sincere, rather than just cynically telling liberals what he thought they wanted to hear. He seems very good at exploiting the endless credulity of liberals. Rather than “Hope” and “Change,” Obama’s slogan might as well have been, “Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.”


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Category: Hillary Clinton, Libya

Comments

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    Michael Moore was one of the guests on the opening night of Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Current TV, and he delved into this. According to him,  while it is not good that Obama is engaging in war, at least his heart is in the right place. He has good intentions, unlike Bush, whose intentions were based on money and politics and shored up by lies. How do liberals even take themselves seriously, let alone expect anybody else to?

  • JeffS

    I wouldn’t call the “pursuit of power” a “principle”; it’s more of an objective.  Otherwise, spot on, Stacy.

    And Billary can kiss my white, bitter, gun clinging ass.

  • Hills

    “I’m sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we’re Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration. ”
    Hillary Rodham Clinton 2008

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    It was shored up by oil, Halliburton, and his just plain evilness!

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    It was shored up by oil, Halliburton, and his just plain evilness!

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    It was shored up by oil, Halliburton, and his just plain evilness!

  • huerfano

    Disagreeing with Barry is not only unpatriotic, it’s downright racist.  Wait, I meant straight-up racist.  No, it’s hatin’ on a black man.  Ah, whatever.  You know what I mean.

  • Pingback: The Spot-On Quote Of The Day… « The Camp Of The Saints

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere
  • http://twitter.com/klejdys Klejdys aka Gamblor

    Nice to see Stacy has been reading his Steve Sailer.  There are worse places to take one’s inspiration from, that’s for sure.

    “Who, whom” applies to all manner of the liberal’s dogma.  Affirmative action, immigration, disparate impact, gay marriage – everything is run though “Who, whom.”  The personal becomes the political.  How do I get more power, how do I alienate and persecute those who disagree with what I believe.

    Keep up the excellent work.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Awarded the THE SPOT-ON QUOTE OF THE DAY at:
    The Camp Of The Saints

  • Droidist

    I don’t know, Mr McCain — I suppose you *could* say Stinky’s Illegal War™ comes from a pursuit of power.

    Knowing Progies as well as I do, I see it simply as a thoughtless gratification of their impulse to kill fellow humans. All three of the major flavours of this totalitarian mush featured the senseless (I.e. goal-less) snuffing of people unable to properly defend themselves, NAZIs, Soviets, Maoists. Why would unabashed admirers of these systems of thought act in a different manner?

    Sure, these murderers turned inward towards their own populations, ut currently we — for the most part — are an armed people. I’m certain that Bill’s Summer Solution™ will be fully implemented once we are disarmed.

    Then things can return to a Historical Norm, and Stinky can smile his Big Smile.

  • http://www.redstateeclectic.typepad.com AngelaTC

    The Bush wars created a horrific tendency among Republicans to openly call for the genocide of the Muslims, so unless we talk about the Trotskyites roots in the backgrounds of the current Republican strategists, its hard to honestly define that particular trait as an especially progressive one.

    Both sides are playing some psychotic game of soccer with a horribly broken foreign policy. The fact that the Democrats have re-adopted the all-war, all-the-time strategy that the neocons brought into the GOP when they migrated over from the left isn’t anything to brag about, especially considering that nobody wants to address the fact that the wars were the entire reason we lost so hard in 2006.

    The policy is a fail by every measure. 

  • Anonymous

    I agree. Excellent article by RSM, but I slightly disagree with the last paragraph (before the update).

    I’d suggest that progressives’ chief animating principle is “social justice,” in the pursuit of which, however, they will justify just about anything. But, yes, in the process, they’ll frequently use “Who, Whom?” logic as well as many other rationalizations in defense of progressivism, the Democrat Party, and whoever else is flying “friendly” colors.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    Bravo, Angela, you hit the nail on the head right there. Screw our hand-holding, police the world foreign policy. We have a legitimate interest in the Persian Gulf to protect shipping, but just about nowhere else we have troops stationed. Get them out of Europe, Japan, and South Korea.

    As far as committing genocide against the Arab world or anywhere else, there’s a simple way to accomplish that without firing a shot. Just get the hell out of these places and let the ingrates do themselves in, which they doubtless would in short order. The world population would be halved in two decades or less, and we would save trillions of dollars in the bargain.

    Then once the rubble is cleared away maybe we can actually introduce Europe to the joys of Western Civilization. Or at least soap and water.

  • Anonymous

    “The Bush wars created a horrific tendency among Republicans to openly call for the genocide of the Muslims”

    That is a lie, and you are a liar.

    Only if you can redefine genocide to mean that we take Islam as what its’ founder said it was:

    That the world is divided into the Dar al Islam, and the Dar al Harb.

    That ALL those who refuse to convert to Islam are to be subjected to slavery or death, as any Muslim can decide.

    And “all war all the time” is another lie. No one advocated war in the absence of documented proven attacks by Islamic dominated countries and individuals.

  • Anonymous

    Who you calling a Republican?

  • Anonymous

    This is also known as the Marine solution to Somalia’s problems: put up a wall around the place and wait until the shooting stops to go in and offer help. Presuming, of course, there’s anyone left alive.

  • Anonymous

    I take issue with several “premises” in this post. For the moment I’ll just tackle the notion that the Spanish American only compares well to really stupid policies. The bases we acquired in the Pacific during that conflict and after WW1 were crucial to our war effort against Japan, further more our benevolent rule over those nations almost gave Imperialism a good name.

    By the by who is Trotsky in this little melodrama?

  • Crawford

    “The Bush wars created a horrific tendency among Republicans to openly call for the genocide of the Muslims”

    Crack pipe getting a workout today?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1385852725 Richard Mcenroe

    Actually, we only have one simple question, Madame Secretary:

    http://tinyurl.com/6322ldz

  • Nospam

    Give me a dime for every Muslim publicly calling for the extermination of Americans, Christians, “The West”, et cetera; and I’ll give you a dollar for every Republican publicly calling for the “extermination’ of Islam.
    You’ll be working off the debt to me for the rest of your natural life.

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